The present disclosure relates to patient support apparatuses such as hospital beds. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to patient support apparatuses having surfaces or mattresses with air bladders that are inflated or deflated to achieve turn assist or therapeutic functions.
Hospital beds having patient support surfaces with a turn assist feature are known. Turn assist involves turning a patient toward the left side or the right side for an extended period of time so that a caregiver can more easily perform a task such as changing a wound dressing or changing bed linens. Hospital beds that have therapy features are also known. For example, in contrast to turn assist, rotation therapy involves alternately and repeatedly turning a patient from side-to-side by inflating and/or deflating bladders on a right side and a left side of a mattress. Rotation therapy is sometimes referred to as continuous lateral rotation therapy (CLRT). Other therapies associated with mattresses include low air loss therapy, percussion and/or vibration therapy, alternating pressure therapy, and wave mode therapy such as Hill-Rom's OPTIREST™ feature, just to name a few.
It is desirable for a patient to be properly positioned on a mattress when the turn assist function is operated or when a therapy function is operated. If the patient is not properly positioned on the mattress, the overall efficacy of the function or therapy may be degraded or compromised. The known prior art mattress systems rely on a caregiver's ability to visually determine whether or not a patient is properly positioned on a mattress prior to initiating a turn assist function or a therapeutic function of the mattress. It is not uncommon for patients to inadvertently shift toward a foot end of a hospital bed of the type having a bed frame with movable mattress support sections. This is because when a head section of the bed frame is raised to place a patient in a sitting up position, for example, the patient has a tendency to slide down the head section toward the foot end of the bed such that, when the head section is lowered back down again, the patient remains shifted toward the foot end of the bed. Then, when one or more caregivers pull a patient back up in bed, they may pull the patient too far toward the head end of the bed. Accordingly, there is room for improvement in connection with providing information to caregivers as to whether a patient is or is not properly positioned on a mattress.